Thursday, 23 July 2009

Cruddas "literally not interested" in the leadership

There is no doubt that Jon Cruddas is one of the most interesting and thoughtful politicians around at the moment. That’s why a growing number of people in the Labour Party have pinned their hopes on him to lead them out of current woes – or at the very least add some intellectual/ideological heft to a front bench in the near future.

His wide ranging interview with Mary Riddell in the new issue of the Fabian Review, published today, will both fuel the Cruddas love and disappoint his fan club: he displays all the characteristics that make him so appealing - that unusual mix of the human and the wonk - and then rules himself out of ever moving off the back benches. Hard to see any wriggle room here:

"The leadership doesn’t interest me. There are certain identikit characteristics which a leader has to have, and I don’t have them. I don’t have the certainty needed to do it. I couldn’t deal with it. I have a different conception of how I want to live my life.

“I literally am not interested. A lot of blokes in and around Cabinet could do it. Harriet Harman has shown real steel. There’s the Miliband lads, James Purnell and younger people...I’m not ambitious – that’s my problem. Tony Blair, Nick Clegg and David Cameron are physiologically interchangeable. They are merging into the same person – constructing a politician that fits the rubric.”

This is pretty emphatic stuff. And the honesty and modesty of his critique of himself and those politicians that reach the top might make you wish someone could change his mind.

2 comments:

Dan Brett offers this amusing comment on the interview, made via facebook.

"In Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers "trilogy", the position of President of the Universe was given to the person who least wanted it, ie a man in a hut living on an isolated rainy world with his cat. The theory was that such a president would have no self-interest and let people get on with their lives without unnecessary interference by a narcissistic or dictatorial leader"

The same Cruddas that votes for Blair and Brown against what he says, that what we use to call cowardice, Sorry Cruddas blew it with Compass telling people we must fight then ran away. the welfare reforms his mouth was shooting off then he came to the hard bit voting he did not bother, 42 days all mouth about fighting it then voted for it, how do you trust people like this.